Mercenarium

How this table plays

Mercenarium with the Monday Night rules, 2 to 4 players. Your house is at the bottom of the board; empty seats are played by bots. Squares use the official notation: files a–e, ranks 1–5 (South's house is c1).

Your turn (Core)

• Take exactly one action: summon, move, capture, buy, sing, learn or draw.
• Summon into your house if it's empty, or next to one of your cards that shares suit, value, or is one value away (A connects to 2 and K). Lords in hand match anything; a Lord in play only bases its own suit and other Lords.
• Capture: where two cards touch, more pips wins. Ties go to the wheel. Opposite suits (Blades–Souls, Gears–Claws) can annihilate; same suit blocks. Lords ignore pips and use the wheel.
• Buy: flip one face-up capture down to take an enemy J/Q/K/A that isn't under contract.
• Learn: offer two 2–9s, one 10+/Lord, a capture, or your hymn plus a card or capture, and draw a hymn. You can sing it from your next turn.
• Hand: 5 cards plus 1 hymn. Colored band on a card = the side it belongs to.
• Win: 5 captures (spent ones count). Or the other side sits in limbo (nothing in play, house occupied) for a full round.
• Singularity: when the deck or hymnal runs dry, discards, hymnal and deck shuffle into one deck. No hand limit, no learn, every turn ends with a draw. When that deck empties: most face-up captures wins, then most captures, then the best single face-up capture.

Three and four players

• Seats go clockwise from you: South, West, North, East (3 players: South, West, North). Every other player is an enemy.
• Meatwar can answer any capture on the table, not only one against you.
• Before the singularity you can sit in limbo as long as it lasts. During the singularity a full round in limbo eliminates you.
• Limbo victory: every opponent stuck in limbo for a full round.
• Cycle stalemate only applies to 2 players.

Rulings I made where the guide is silent

1. Fool die: 1–5 pips on every edge, 6 is the sphere (Lord of Bones). The Fox is set by its owner when summoned; re-rolling it later: 1–4 Lord of Claws/Souls/Gears/Blades, 5 owner chooses, 6 Seed.
2. A numbered Fool fights pip cards by its pips (ties block) and blocks against Lords. Nothing captures the Lord of Bones; it threatens everything except the Seed. The Seed annihilates with any adjacent enemy, Bones included.
3. East and West houses (e3, a3) are ordinary squares in a 2-player game.
4. Contract: a summoned or bought merc can't be bought during the opponent's next turn.
5. Buying or offering a capture flips your lowest-ranked face-up capture.
6. A hymn you learn or draw can't be sung until your next turn. Meatwar is the exception as a reaction: you can answer a capture with it straight away.
7. Proactive Meatwar doesn't make you pass. Reactive Meatwar does.
8. A set Zodiac showing II is Meatwar. From your hand, or showing anything else, you can try a Meatwar Special: roll a d12, II works, anything else burns the Zodiac.
9. Tiebreak ladder: 0 Fool lowest, then 2 of Claws up through the Aces (face value, then Claws < Souls < Gears < Blades), then Lords, then IV Seasons, XII Druid, XIII Zodiac, and 00 Fox on top. Attached hymns ride into the captor's pile stuck to their card: they rank for the tiebreak but don't count as an extra capture.
10. Optimo rearranges every card inside 2 spaces of your house, enemy cards included.
11. Dragoon: both moves are the same card; either can capture or annihilate, and a Seasons card may turn instead. The Fool rolls once, after both.
12. Kintsukuroi's "ignoring value" summons still need one of your cards beside them, or your empty house.
13. Primary in the singularity: take any card from the deck into hand, summon it, or sing it.
14. Limbo, 2 players: you get one turn to escape. If you're still in limbo when your opponent's next turn starts, you lose.
15. Singularity ends at the end of the turn the deck runs out.
16. Meatwar held by a third player can cancel a capture between two others.
17. Cycle stalemate (2 players only): the same board, hand sizes and player to move for a third time is a draw.